March 2018
Since being introduced, use of the ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services branch IDs within the financial services industry has accelerated at an exponential rate because these unique IDs have provided a way to automatically verify and update branches without manual intervention. The breadth of use of these IDs and the volume of weekly updates occurring have given us insights into how to improve the logic we employ to manage addresses within ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services. After months of analysis and preparation, we are introducing enhanced address logic.
Minimize the number of branches by consolidating variations of the same address
Limit immaterial changes to addresses
Avoid changing branch IDs when there are immaterial changes to addresses (e.g. Street to St)
Eliminate the “flipping” of addresses back and forth for reps with multiple registered addresses
Wherever possible identify the rep's actual branch location and not default to the HQ address
Over the years we have never stopped enhancing our address management logic and processes, and that is one of the reasons why ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services is universally considered the default source for CRM data management for the financial services industry. In this latest series of improvements, an exhaustive effort has been made attempting to perfect our logic for processing address change, linking reps to branches, and manufacturing the right ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services branch IDs, with the intended end result being enduring, highly accurate branches that our clients can rely on to an even greater degree than they have relied on our branch data to date.
We will not load new addresses until they are U.S. Postal Service CASS certified, unless an exhaustive but unsuccessful effort has been made to certify the address (a small fraction cannot be certified). Previously we loaded all new addresses weekly whether certified or not and then certified later, in some cases resulting in changes to branch IDs.
The above approach will also allow us the time to find cases in which the address already exists and thereby eliminate creating a nearly identical version of the same address.
We are employing in our matching logic every available address for a rep across BD, RIA, Insurance and Home.
We are including in the primary address selection logic home state and those states in which the rep is registered. For example, if a rep has addresses in two states we will usually select as primary the one in which the rep resides.
We are carefully comparing addresses that are very close to the same but not identical, especially for reps with the same firm association, and consolidating where possible.
To further limit future change, once we select the address for a rep, so long as that address continues to be one of the rep's registered locations, we will not change that rep's address even if our logic suggests a change. We will only change a rep's address in this scenario by manual override.
As we go forward, all these enhancements to our address management process will result in even better, cleaner addresses, less variations of the same address, and much less change in branch IDs. But the initial implementation of these logic enhancements will result in a significant number of one-time changes this week.
ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services currently includes approximately 724,000 active reps with 811,000 associations at 38,000 firms. The reps are at 168,000 unique addresses in 137,000 building locations. We are deleting over 16,000 unique Discovery Physical Branch IDs, primarily by consolidating reps who are located in the same building and associated with the same firm. We are also adding over 16,600 unique new Discovery Physical Branch IDs, primarily due to moving reps from the company's headquarters address to the actual branch location at which the rep resides. The Discovery Physical Branch ID is changing for 90,000 reps.
If you have MarketLink for Salesforce installed and have a Branch Account structure, the Discovery Physical Branch ID is the unique ID used to manage your Branch Accounts and the relationship between Branch Accounts and Contacts. There may be significant change to your Branch Accounts. Here are the impacts from this one-time change:
If you have duplicate Branch Account records with different Discovery Physical Branch IDs with reps under each (due to a slight variation on the address), you will notice that the reps have been consolidated into one of the Branch Accounts if you have enabled Contact Movement through MarketLink for Salesforce. This change results in the prior Branch Account(s) often having no related Contacts and the ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services Status changing to Inactive. We recommend that you review the surviving Branch Account and ensure that all of the related list information is appearing on this Account; if not it may be on the prior Branch Account. You can either merge the Branch Accounts or update the prior Branch Account with the latest Discovery Physical Branch ID and then delete the Branch Account(s) you have decided not to retain.
If any of your Contacts must be moved to Branch Accounts that you do not currently have in your CRM, you will need to create the Branch Accounts, as MarketLink for Salesforce will not automatically create new Branch Accounts. With this week's changes, in cases where a Contact is given a new Discovery Physical Branch ID for which there is not a matching Branch Account in your CRM, the Contact's ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services Status will be changed to Updated and the Contact's ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services Parent/Branch Status will be changed to Wrong Account. For these cases, if you run a report of these Contacts and send it to ISS - Institutional Shareholder Services, we will then provide you with the Branch Accounts that need to be created along with the IDs.
We are here to help you manage these address enhancements. If you have any questions, please contact DD_datalinksupport@issgovernance.com.
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